21.6 mi / 12.6 mph / 184 ft. climbing
Home: Matt and Heather’s House

Filling our empty fuel bottle would have required an 8-mile round trip to the nearest gas station, so we decided to just pack up and get breakfast in Lewes. We were supposed to be at Dogfish Head for our tour at 11:30am, and since it was only 13 miles away, we could have a lazy morning. But apparently I was too lazy, because by the time we got rolling, the calculations revealed that we needed to push, and we even considered a quicker McDonald’s vs. the sit-down restaurant we’d planned.

But we stuck with Honeys Farm Fresh Gourmet Kitchen, and it was a good choice, with their veggie-heavy Eggs Benedict Latkes hitting the spot for both of us, although the quality (and perhaps their location in historic-cute central Lewes) cost us more than dinner with beer last night! The waitress did first try to entice us into Bloody Marys, but we’re going to start drinking at noon and not a minute earlier!

We’d initially parked our bikes on the sidewalk in front, but were quickly told that bikes need to go around the side, an indication how many people arrive here by bike (99% of business we stop at have never had enough bikes to inspire a bike policy). But I bet most other cyclists aren’t spitting toothpaste into the bushes after brushing in that side lot!

A few blocks later we picked up the Georgetown-Lewes Trail, yet another great piece of bike infrastructure in the region, and probably a decent contributor to the cafe’s bike policy. Some headwinds when we got off the trail counteracted the time we had made up off the trail, but we still rolled into Milton and Dogfish Head’s main brewery by 11:45am and no scolding for being 15 minutes “late”.

I’m usually not that interested in brewery tours, but Dogfish Head holds a special place in my beer-drinking history, and at $20, sounded like a great deal. In addition to our entertaining tour guide, our group of 5 got five tastings along the way: their standard 60 Minute IPA, an exclusive R&D beer (miraculously a saison, Rett’s favorite style and one Dogfish Head rarely makes), a canned cocktail (total sellout IMO!), one of their newer nationwides, Citrus Squall, and finally (and funly) a market-research beer, where we were told nothing about its style, but were asked to answer a questionnaire about it.

Then we each got a four-pour flight of anything from the bar, bringing us up to the equivalent of 3-4 12oz beers by lunch. So when a fellow tour guest gifted us two more flight cards, we certainly appreciated the gesture, but wouldn’t have been able to ride onward had we converted them to liquid form. But the sweetest gesture of all was when our tour guide Tim bought Rett and I each a pair of Dogfish Head socks from the gift shop, seemingly with his own money! Normal tour guests get to take home one of the tasting glasses, but since we obviously had to decline that tour favor, Tim came up with an alternative, completely unexpected. It’s especially touching, because it’s not the first time we’ve been gifted socks, simply as a “reward” for the off-centered lifestyle we lead.

Ten more easy miles brought us to Matt and Heather’s house, old friends from the days when I was involved with the band Iced Earth. When Dennis and I pedaled this way in 2010, they took us to dinner at Dogfish Head’s Rehoboth brewpub. This time we’re glad to have the time to accept their generous invitation to actually stay with them.

It’s always been a bit of a mystery to me how I was so lucky to have this heavy metal power couple befriend me, even if I’ve always known that behind the curtain of the Wikipedia entry they’re just “normal people”. But seeing the life they’ve built here, this home of love and stability, the fit seems more obvious. The irony is that I’m now the one out on a “world tour”!

It was also fun to see the reflections of their personalities and relationship mirrored in our own. What remains amazing is Heather’s prescience as a 22-year-old, seeing qualities in a fellow 22-year-old (me) that would still fit smoothly together 25 years later (also the girl she wanted to set me up with 14 years ago ended up married to Matt’s boss at the police department, so she’s clearly a savant at judging character!)

Day 2

Drinking from noon to midnight, even with a low overall volume, is not very compatible with my 47-year-old body. The headache I went to bed with was still raging strong when I woke up. We only had 14 miles to our next stop, so no big deal. But by the time I started feeling better, Rett began having stomach issues. Doreen, our next host, was sounding pretty exhausted from her husband’s surgery, so combining that with Heather and Matt’s expressed wish for us to stay longer, we decided to take them up on their generosity and spent another wonderful afternoon and evening talking and grilling and being together. Sometimes our lifestyle sucks because it prevents us from seeing friends as much as we’d like, and sometimes it’s awesome because it allows us to see friends we haven’t seen in far too long.